Tops of the town: The friendly market investing in fresh and community

A bullish multimillion-dollar remodel program and an admirable willingness to enter, serve and improve markets that competitors have largely disavowed have made Tops Friendly Markets much more than a grocery store.

Whether it’s access to high-quality produce and other fresh food, career advancement for its 13,000 associates, or simply offering communities a place to connect, the Williamsville, N.Y.-based Tops is creating opportunity.

That opportunity is not lost on Tops’ newly named president, Ron Ferri, with whom The Packer spoke in mid-July, just two weeks after he assumed the post. Before becoming president, Ferri, who has been with Tops for 34 years, had served as executive vice president of operations and distribution since 2015.

“It’s humbling,” Ferri said. “I grew up in a single-parent household on social services in the inner city of Buffalo, so I feel very fortunate to have this opportunity to work for the same company all my life, to further my education while here and to now become president.”

At 15, Ferri’s first job at Tops was in the produce department, where he learned valuable lessons that would ultimately shape his leadership vision.

“My first produce manager told me the quality of your produce department impacts the entire store’s sales,” Ferri said. “At the time, I was young and didn’t appreciate it, but having high-quality standards in produce was part of my initial training process. I still think of that to this day, because if customers come in and don’t see that you’re supplying good quality produce, it impacts your store’s overall image and without question, it impacts sales.”

Delivering an exceptional produce department experience is equally important to Tops Vice President of Produce and Floral Jeff Cady, as well as every district manager, regional vice president, and store manager, Ferri says. “They all know how important produce is to the entire store.”

Investing in first and lasting impressions

Since 2021, Tops has invested approximately $40 million a year in a capital improvement plan focused largely on remodeling its nearly 150 full-service supermarkets in cities, towns and rural areas across New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont. The average investment on each remodel is between $1.5 million and $2.5 million, and Tops aims to implement the refresh when stores are between 7 to 10 years old, Ferri said.

Enhancements include everything from updates to the exterior of the building and parking lot to new flooring, ceilings and interior paint, as well as reimagined fresh departments inside the store.

“As in most stores, produce is the first department the customer walks into, so a colorful and fresh produce department is one of the things that we pride ourselves on,” Ferri said.

With its recent remodel of three stores in Erie, Pa., Tops has remodeled 35 locations in the last three years. And this year the grocer is allocating another $40 million to its remodel program that includes the refurbishment of nine stores.

Ferri says that with each remodel, Tops typically increases the product assortment by 10%. Rather than expanding the size of its departments, the grocer primarily uses new cases with additional shelf space to accommodate more variety but fewer items per SKU.

“We’re getting a lot more variety when we do our remodels, and that’s where, quite frankly, we’ve seen the increase in sales — in just having additional variety,” he said. “We still do large mass displays of high-penetration items throughout the [produce] department, but it’s with the slower-moving SKUs that we’ve added variety without a lot of exposure, and that has really worked for us.”

Prior to the remodels, Ferri says stores may have shied away from carrying anything beyond the top SKUs in some of the more crowded categories like packaged salads, but the new store formats allow for more product, especially in fresh.

“In the fresh departments — in particular produce, prepared foods and the deli departments — the increase in the amount of items that we carry might even be a little bit more than 10%,” said Ferri, who adds that Tops’ customers are looking for grab-and-go convenience.

The remodels also provide an opportunity to add more cases to accommodate more of these fresh items.

It’s been a recipe for success for Tops.

“We’re very bullish on our remodel program, and it has actually exceeded our expectations over the last few years,” Ferri said. “We’ve seen fantastic results from a sales return perspective, and our customer feedback has been outstanding. The results are there, and it’s a proven strategy that we want to keep moving forward with.”

Given the remodel program’s ROI, Ferri is optimistic that Tops will continue to keep pace with the multimillion-dollar refreshes moving forward.

Investing in people

Another important theme for Tops is to connect with its employees and the communities it serves.

“We’re in a lot of communities that other big box retailers would never even think of going in because the stores may be in smaller towns, but we’re not afraid to do that,” Ferri said. “In some rural areas, we’re the only supermarket company in town, so we know we absolutely have to be part of the community.”

Despite, in some instances, being the only grocery game in town, Tops remains committed to keeping stores in potential food deserts as up to date as its city and suburban locations.

“A retailer might say, ‘If we’re the only grocer in town, why do we need to remodel the store? It’s a closed environment.’ At Tops, we just don’t take that approach, and we don’t take our customers for granted,” Ferri said.

In conjunction with its remodels, Tops makes donations to various community organizations as another way to connect with the communities it serves, Ferri says.

Related: Tops' $2.7M renovation features fresh-cut produce first

Tops also sees an important social responsibility and development component to its remodel program.

“People and social development are critical for our success as we move forward,” Ferri said. “These investments in our stores are also an investment in our people. As we continue to expand operations and grow sales in our remodeled stores, we create opportunities for all of our associates.”

As Ferri looks ahead, he takes with him lessons learned — not only in produce, but from a life-altering event experienced by the Tops community last year.

“The tragedy we experienced on May 14 really reinvigorated our commitment to the communities that we serve and the collective Tops’ team of 13,000 associates,” said Ferri, referring to a mass shooting that killed 10 people in a Tops store on the east side of Buffalo, N.Y., last year.

“It made us understand how important the Tops’ team members are to our communities,” he continued. “That’s going to be a primary focus for me in this first year as president — to make sure that we’re engaging with our communities on the ground and in our stores.”